Are virtual reality days already numbered?

Virtual reality days are already numbered? Judging by gaming sector signals, but not only, it seems possible.

There are increasing doubts as what can really be the future of virtual reality platforms like Sansar or High Fidelity. The problem could be associated with the negative value attributed by most people to the very concept of virtuality.

CCP Games (Eve Online) cost cutting

The latest announcement that shook, adversely, virtual reality sector has come from CCP Games, developer of the famous MMO Eve Online, which has announced the closure of two of its studios, the Newcastle one, that gave birth to Eve: Valkyrie, and the Atlanta one, that was focused on the development of virtual reality games, together with stopping to develop further VR projects.

According to the company, basically, virtual reality didn’t get as much players as to pay back the high development costs and the same Eve: Valkyrie is actually a desert virtual world, despite the launch last September of Eve: Valkyrie – Warzone expansion with new maps and new equipment that you can play, in the multiplayer mode, cross-platform and cross-dimension (i.e. even if the player has not a VR headset).

Sansar and High Fidelity at risk?

Will Sansar have the same fate? Many people wonder whether Linden Lab will have financial resources and skills enough to fully develop Sansar (having also decided to develop its own graphic engine instead of using Unreal or Unity) and to promote to the extent that it won’t look like a desert.

This applies all the more to High Fidelity, right now lagging behind in development. But it’s not just gaming to give warnings: as pointed out blogger and well-known Second Life “resident” Wagner James Au, also the “VRporn” sector does not seem to register any significant rise in the users number, still an extremely tiny fraction of the sector’s worldwide traffic.

For instance, regarding the famous Pornhub site you can estimate there are no more than 50 thousand daily users attracted by VR content, in the face of about 26 million daily users on average as a whole.

Google and Snapchat disappointed by AR

Thus two of the presumed growth “drivers” for adopting VR technology look like they’ve more trouble than estimated. Viewers‘ price ceertainly had so far an adverse impact, but beyond that there is a feeling (also confirmed by the fundamental failure of projects AR-related like Google Glass or Spectacles Snapchat) that users don’t like to have to wear on their faces devices which alter reality.

At the end the trouble with all is “virtual” will precisely be that fact that most of people continue, rightly or wrongly, to consider virtualiy a negative value, as explained years ago a poll by Mondivirtuali?